Zero tolerance gone awry

In this case, it’s the Florida school district which expelled a 15-year-old straight-A student and the state’s attorney who has threatened her with two felony charges for finding out what happens when a toilet cleaner is mixed with aluminum foil.

The resulting hydrogen gas blew the top off the water bottle. No one was injured. There was no damage to school property.

Kiera Wilmot later that day was handcuffed, arrested, then expelled.

Advertisement

The felony charges, if issued, would be “possession/discharge of a weapon on school grounds” and “discharging a destructive device.”

Her actions violated a school district code of conduct which requires expulsion for any student with an explosive device unless it’s part of a sanctioned school activity or a supervised science project.

Should she have known she’d made an explosive device? Well, she apparently expected something to happen. When asked about it, she said something about an experiment.

It’s possible she was being slightly disingenuous. Teenagers have been known to be.

But a teenager with her reputation — interested in science, an honor student, well-liked — didn’t deserve those official reactions.

Her plight has attracted interest from an interesting source.

A number of American scientists are appalled at the responses from the school and the prosecutor.

They’re praising her curiosity, pointing out that they too “blew something up” in school, and that their curiosity led them into the study, practice and teaching of science. And some may have pointed out that women are still under-represented in science. There’s talk of a scholarship.

That expression of curiosity in their teens, they and we can acknowledge, preceded widespread fears of litigation, terrorism and resulting zero-tolerance.

At this point, it seems unlikely that the girl will be tried on felony charges, whether as an adult or juvenile.

It would make far more sense for the school district to rescind her expulsion and instead sentence her to study the chemical reaction and forces she created and the ability of that plastic water bottle to withstand those forces.